Well, I do not think he was assigned to Ukraine in 1942, so he has no expertise in what happened there at that time. As I wrote, that may be why he so carelessly distorts Struk's statements, such as that Vieweg had been a member of a hit squad shooting Jews on the Eastern Front whereas in fact that person had been posted to Norway.As with any foreign or specialising correspondent - his area of assigmment becomes his "area of expertise"; hence, when posted to Northern Ireland fo three years early in the Troubles, his work and time there led to the above and
The Point of No Return: The Strike which Broke the British in Ulster (1975). London: Times Books/Deutsch. ISBN 0-233-96682-X
As I wrote, I found a large number of sites exhibiting this photo, and the standard description is that it shows Jews being shot adter digging their own grave.It may not look like an organised shooting but the text at the backside of the photo says it is "Judenaktion", which does not suggest ad hoc-operation. Which part of that action it is, remains of course an open question as we do not at the moment have any descriptions about the events. According to Struk, another photo apparently showing the same operation includes soldiers posing for the photographer.
There is in existence a number of photographs (and even a film) of victims being shot in or beside a prepared pit. The procedure is always the same; the victims stand in the pit, or stand or kneel in a straight line along the edge of the pit, the shooters stand in a line behind them and fire.
The reason for the sameness of the procedure is obvious; the victims after being shot fall down in or into the pit and can be simply covered over with earth, thereby avoiding the onerous and unpleasant task of actually carrying the corpses of the victims to the pit.
In another variant, the so-called "sardine-packing", the victims were made to actually lie down in the pit where they were then shot, sometimes by just one shooter walking along the line of victims, on the edge of the pit or even in it, shooting them one by one.
The photo in question shows nothing like that. The victims are not standing in or along an excavated pit, but are divided into at least two groups.
There is a person lying at the feet of the man in German police uniform who appears to be firing at the woman with the child. That person may have been shot already; it is possible that the policeman had shot her from behind, and then turned to shoot the woman with the child, who may be running away.
On the other hand it is possible that the person lying on the ground has not been shot, and is simply lying there.
If we assume that this person has in fact already been shot, presumably by the policeman shown aiming his rifle, we are left with the question why he or she was shot in that position, and not stood in or at the edge of a grave. As it is, the shooters are left with the task of dragging a corpse to the grave, which in keeping with the normal procedure is something they would have tried to avoid.
As I wrote, the general picture is one of disorganisation, even chaos, not of an organised shooting.
It may be that the persons in civilian clothes were indeed being conveyed to an execution site, but it is doubtful that the photo shows that prepared site. It is more probable that for some reason (quite possibly the realisation or suspicion that they were being led to their deaths) the persons in civilian clothes began to scatter and the policemen guarding them then just started firing at then in situ, which would explain why the victims are not neatly lined up along a pit, as shown in other photographs of executions or as described by witnesses.
The bottom line is that we have to interpret the action shown in the photo from what we actually see there, not try to fit it into a pre-conceived formula that we know from elsewhere.
Fisk poses the right question when at the beginning of his gushy opinion piece he asks what we are seeing here. Unfortunately, he does not really try to analyse dispassionately what is shown in the photo but merely waxes all emotional about a presumed woman with a parting in her hair (as he tends to do, quite deliberately, in all his journalistic writings); that may be due to his lack of expertise in this area. But as I wrote previously, his obvious purpose is to draw a parallel between alleged German atrocities in Ukraine in 1942 and alleged American atrocities in Iraq in the period since 2003.
As for the other photo referred to by Struk, it is merely a surmise on her part that it shows the same scene at a later stage. In order to make any judgement about that second photo, we would need to know more about its history, eg where was it found, when, etc.
For what it is worth, I will offer an alternative interpetation of what the photo shows. A group of German policemen (at least five of them, the man shown in the photo, three men with rifles not shown, and the person who took the photo) are guarding a group of civilians (at least seven of them).
Two shovels are lying on the ground, and it is reasonable to presume that they had been carried by the civilians, and that those civilians had been given the task of doing some digging. There appears to be some disturbed earth on the extreme right edge of the photo, next to the group of (possibly) five civilians bending over or crouching down, so it may be that the digging task had already commenced.
Since the shovels are lying on the ground, it could be that the guards have ordered the civilians to take a break; in any case they are not actually digging. But the civilians are definitely at ground level, bending over or crouching down, not standing in any sort of excavated pit.
In this proposed scenario, the policemen guarding the prisoners have ordered them to take a break and to lie down, the latter for the purpose of keeping them under guard. The group of four or five civilians to the right of the photo have laid down the shovels and are in the process od assuming a prone position, as ordered.
The one policeman shown in the photo has been guarding two women, one of them holding a child. The two women were standing separately from the other four (or five) civilians; perhaps they were not doing any digging. The policeman was standing behind them.
One of the two women has obeyed the order to lie down on the ground. Being nervous and afraid, she presses her face against the ground to show her obedience.
The other woman panics and starts to run away. The policeman who had been standing behind her raises his rifle and takes aim at her. Possibly he had ordered her stop and lie down. Possibly the other policemen standing to the left, outside the photo, saw the woman start to run away and also aimed their rifles toward her.
What happened next we do not know. Perhaps the woman stopped and lay down. Perhaps she was shot.
But how did this dramatic scene come to be photographed. We have to assume that someone in the party of guards had brought his camera and decided to take a photo. Possibly the guards were relaxing after ordering the civilians to take a break, and one of them decided to take a snapshot of the civilians lying on the ground and the other policemen standing in a relaxed position guarding them.
It may be that the photographer had taken a shot of the civilians digging ("lazy Jews put to useful work"), and was preparing to take another shot of them lying down. The fact that the other policemen are outside the frame of the photo suggests that originally the photographer was not aiming at them, but rather at the huddled group of civilians at the right of the photo.
Under this scenario, the photographer is aiming his camera toward the group of civilians who have been digging; he is waiting for them to lie down before taking his photo. His police comrades are not in the shot being prepared; they are standing to the left, and so are the two women.
As the photographer is lining up his camera, he hears a sudden shout. He swings sightly to the left, still holding his camera in the ready position. He sees the woman with the child running to the right, away from the policeman guarding her; he sees that policeman aiming his rifle at her. Immediately, on impulse, he takes the photo.
The result is an unusually dramatic scene that does not give the impression of having been staged. The very drama of the scene, its uniqueness, may be the reason for the photo's having been sent by mail to Germany.
As for the word "Judenaktion" allegedly written on the back of the photo (and there is no way of knowing for certain whether the words on the back of the photo had been written by the sender, or by the Poles who found it), it is entirely possible that the group of civilians consisted of Jews who were in the process of being taken to an execution site. If that is the case, it is unlikely that the place where the photo was taken was that actual execution site, it is more likely that the photo has adventitiously captured an impromptu escape attempt.
On the other hand, maybe the civilians were not being taken to be executed. Perhaps they were being taken somewhere to do some work, and one or more of them tried to escape. Perhaps the civilians were not even Jews. We do not know for certain. The only indication that they may be Jews is the word "Judenaktion" on the back of the photo, and we do not know for certain who wrote those words.